Earlier this year, Lonely Planet travel guide compiled a list titled Top 40 Rock ‘n’ Roll Travel Sites, and at No. 1, ahead of a visit to the Rock Hall of Fame in Cleveland, was seeing Chuck Berry perform at the Duck Room in St. Louis.

For many, the surprise in that surprising choice was that Chuck Berry is still alive, much less performing, but it’s true.

The third Wednesday of the month, the singer-songwriter of “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Johnny B. Goode” and “Maybellene” takes the stage in a basement club in his hometown for an intimate show. Wanting a regular showcase in the type of room he played when he was starting out, he’s been gigging in the 340-capacity room since 1996.

As a longtime Chuck Berry fan, as well as an annual visitor to St. Louis, which is near my parents’ home, a Duck Room show has been on my to-do list for years. This time I made it happen, buying a ticket online ($35 plus fees) and planning a visit around the date.

So on May 15, I was on Delmar Boulevard, where Chuck Berry has both a statue and a sidewalk plaque in the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The latter is outside Blueberry Hill, the popular restaurant and nightclub whose basement houses the Duck Room.

Online reviews say the shows are casual and unfocused, that Berry often hits wrong notes on his guitar and forgets his own lyrics, but that he seems to be enjoying himself. In other words, patience and generosity are called for.

Knowing his daughter Ingrid and son Chuck Jr. play with him, I was reminded of witnessing the start of Glen Campbell’s farewell tour in 2011, a concert made more poignant by the presence of two of his children in his band, offering support and encouragement.

All in all, my expectations for the Chuck Berry show were low – which was a good thing.

Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and trademark captain’s cap, Chuck seemed spry, wandering the stage playing guitar and even doing his one-legged hop. But this was less a concert than a jam session.

Berry took the role of a member of the ensemble, noodling on guitar rather than soloing and singing a verse or chorus only occasionally. His band did its best to follow his lead, but sometimes he and they seemed to be playing different songs.

On the other hand, he was battling a cold, wiping his nose on a towel a few times and then playfully waving it at his son, who laughingly recoiled.

Berry played, after a fashion, “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Oh Carol,” “School Days” and “Let it Rock,” maybe a verse of each. He tried a little of “My Ding-a-Ling,” every Chuck Berry fan’s least-favorite Chuck Berry song, before beginning a verse that seemed to exist only in his mind at that moment: “Too many fish in that pond…(hummed a few bars)…what’s that verse?” Giving up, he said, “That’s enough.” He couldn’t have forgotten that song soon enough for me.

They moved on to a number I couldn’t identify and then the blues classic “Key to the Highway,” which Ingrid led on harmonica and vocals. The evening’s driving force was her harmonica, not her dad’s guitar.

“You name it and we’ll try to play it,” Berry remarked to the audience between songs. Someone up front asked for “Nadine” and he gamely tried it, although the lyrics, some of his most complex, tripped him up. “I was campaign shoutin’ like a Southern diplomat” became something like “Champagne shoutin’ like a Georgia Democrat.” I exchanged a bemused glance with another fan next to me.

Yet Berry surprised me with a piece only hardcore fans would recognize, a recitation from 1971 titled “My Dream.” “I’m going to do this one before I forget it. I’m 86 years old!” he joked before launching into the poem about a hideaway he hoped to build: “The roof of it will have peak lines and contours that dip/and form shadowy eaves where the little raindrops can drip… “

He got through all or most of the six-minute piece, which he performed from memory, unaccompanied. Impressive.

Soon the drummer was calling out “Johnny B. Goode,” and Berry played the opening riff. But he sang “Let it Rock,” again.

Regardless, a man in front of me suddenly turned, handed me his camera and excitedly asked me to take his picture with the stage behind him, which I did. Berry invited anybody who wanted to dance to take the stage, and 10 women, from their 20s to 60s, did so as the band jammed, minute after minute.

When Berry finally stepped to the microphone again, he semi-improvised verses to a third song, “Reelin’ and Rockin.'” Then, an hour after the show began, it was over.

My brother was there with me, and he said the show was a train wreck. I wouldn’t say that. But it was the loosest, strangest concert I’ve ever attended.

That’s the idea, I guess. As Blueberry Hill owner Joe Edwards said in 2012: “When he’s playing a big concert, he always plays his hits. But here, he might stop in the middle of the song and tell a joke or play the drums for half a song. He’s done all sorts of fun things on the Duck Room stage. “

As you probably won’t be jetting off to St. Louis to see him – although fans have reportedly done so from Japan and the Netherlands – let me recommend the 50-song CD “Gold,” which has all the hits you need, the documentary “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll” and the memoir “Autobiography,” which is as distinctively written as Bob Dylan’s.

Berry’s sly, knowing songs about teenagers, rock music, cars and consumer culture are fabulous, his multisyllabic lyrics playful and an obvious forerunner to Dylan, and he practically invented rock guitar.

Were people at the Duck Room dissatisfied? Confused, maybe, but not always in a bad way. In the men’s room afterward, a couple of guys were pumped that they’d heard him play “Johnny B. Goode” – which he hadn’t played. Even if it’s a false memory, they’ll cherish it forever.

Me, I’ll cherish being able to tell people, “Oh yeah? Well, I once saw Chuck Berry perform ‘My Dream.'” They won’t know what I’m talking about, but I will.

Since 1997, David Allen has been taking up valuable newsprint and pixels at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he is a columnist and blogger (insidesocal.com/davidallen). Among his specialties: city council meetings, arts and culture, people, places, local history, dining and a log in a field that resembled the Loch Ness monster. The Illinois native has spent his newspaper career in California, starting in 1987 at the Santa Rosa News-Herald and continuing at the Rohnert Park-Cotati Clarion, Petaluma Argus-Courier and Victor Valley Daily Press. A resident of Claremont who roots for the St. Louis Cardinals and knows far too much about Marvel Comics, the Kinks and Frank Zappa's Inland Valley years, he is the author of two collections of columns: "Pomona A to Z" and "Getting Started."

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